as Latin Patriarch.[1] These Latin Patriarchs of Constantinople at once began quarrelling with the Pope, just as the old Byzantine ones had. Meanwhile the legitimate line of Emperors went on, having fled to Nicaea, and a third rival Empire was set up at Trebizond (Trapesus on the Black Sea).[2] So that at this time there were Emperors at Constantinople, Nicæa, and Trebizond. The Orthodox Patriarch accompanied his Emperor to Nicæa. The Latin Empire covered Greece (where a Prince of Achaia ruled under the Emperor), Thessaly (which had a king), and some land on either side of the Propontis. There was an independent Despot of Epirus, and Venice got Crete.[3] Behind the Empire at Nicæa were the Turks under a ruler who called himself Sultan of Rum, as he sat in a land conquered from the Roman Empire. Shut up in a corner was the little Empire at Trebizond, and south of the Sultanate of Rum came what was left of the Crusaders' kingdom of Jerusalem. At last, in 1261, Michael VIII (Palaiologos), of whom we have heard in connection with the Second Council of Lyons (p. 206), succeeded in reconquering Constantinople and driving out the Latins. Baldwin II (1228–1261), the fifth and last Frank Emperor, fled with the Latin Patriarch, Pantaleon. Michael VIII came back to the city in triumph, restored everything as it had been before 1204, and the incident of the fourth Crusade was at an end. Except that the Greek people have never forgotten it, and that of all the things they complain of against the Latins, none has left such a legacy of hatred as this.
- ↑ Old Dandolo had come with them and died at Constantinople. A plain slab in the floor of the Hagia Sophia still bears the inscription Henricus Dandolo.
- ↑ The Emperor had made Alexios Komnenos Duke of Trebizond just before the fourth Crusade. About 1240, the fourth Duke, John Komnenos, seeing Emperors at both Constantinople and Nicæa, thought he might as well be one too, especially as he had Imperial blood (his forbears, the Komnenoi, had held the Roman throne from 1081 to 1185). So he called himself Emperor of the East, Iberia and Peratea, avoiding the name Roman so as not to offend the Palaiologos at Nicæa too utterly. This Empire at Trebizond lasted till 1461 (p. 232, n. 2).
- ↑ The Doge of Venice now added to his titles that of "Despot of a quarter and an eighth of the whole Roman Empire." The Republic did not, of course, possess anything like a quarter or an eighth of the Empire. It is only the pleasant mediæval taste for fine titles.
